Lenox After the Music Stops

Lenox has been a summer address since the eighteen eighties, when the cottagers came up from New York and built houses they insisted on calling modest, and it has been letting the season go gracefully ever since. The last concerts at Tanglewood wind down at the end of August, the traffic on Route 7 thins within a week, and the town settles into the six or eight weeks the regulars consider the whole point. Everything below assumes a stay of two nights, ideally a weekday pair in late September or early October.

The town runs on inns, most of them former cottages, and in the shoulder weeks the rooms that were spoken for all summer suddenly answer the phone. Book something within walking distance of the village center so the car can stay parked, and ask for a room with a working fireplace, since the nights turn cold early at this elevation and the inns were built for exactly that. Rates come down noticeably after Labor Day and again after Columbus Day, though the first two weekends of October fill with leaf traffic, so aim on either side of them.

The village is compact and gives itself up in an hour, but the walking that matters is on the old estates. The Mount, the house Edith Wharton built and wrote in, keeps its gardens open into the fall, and the grounds are worth as much as the tour. Beyond town, the trails at the wildlife sanctuary north of the village and the paths around the reservoirs hold their color into late October, and on a Tuesday morning you will have most of them to yourself.

The kitchens here cook for people who come back every year, which keeps the standards up and the theatrics down. Dinner in the village runs to white tablecloths in old rooms, and the better tables still book out on fall weekends, so call a week ahead rather than trusting the walk-in. Lunch is the local habit worth adopting, a long one, taken outside while the weather allows it.

September in the Berkshires is a slow ripening rather than a sudden turn, with the hills going gold from the top down over three or four weeks. The color usually peaks in the second week of October at this elevation, though the regulars will tell you the week before the peak is the better week, when the light is the same and the buses have not arrived. Bring a heavier coat than the calendar suggests.

Come midweek if you can manage it, since the fall weekends now carry a version of the summer crowds. Book dinner before you arrive, keep a morning free for the estate gardens, and do not attempt the first two weekends of October without a room already in hand. The Mount stops its regular season in the late fall, so check the schedule before building a day around it.

Leave time on the last morning for one more walk before the drive, when the frost is still on the lawns and the town has not quite woken up. That hour is the one you will think about all winter.